


Old Lines, New Script

by russian_blue



Series: Missing Spokes on the Conversational Wheel [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, F/M, Missing Scene, Vallaslin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 07:06:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7564801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/russian_blue/pseuds/russian_blue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Lavellan Inquisitor clings to one principle: that meaning changes over time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Lines, New Script

**Author's Note:**

> Set during the scene between Solas and the Inquisitor after they come back from the Well. Contains spoilers up through the Temple.
> 
> Second in a series of headcanon scenes based on narrative/conversational options I would have taken if Bioware had written them into the game.

She's taken blows in battle that hurt less than this.

"A noble would mark his slaves to honor the god he worshipped," Solas says. "After Arlathan fell, the Dalish forgot."

Verai presses one hand to her stomach, the other to her face. Not since she was tattooed with her _vallaslin_ has she felt this way, like she can _feel_ the ink in her skin. Heavy lines over her eye -- chains. When she chose that mark, she branded herself someone's slave.

Just one more thing the Dalish got wrong.

One more failure, in a litany that never seems to end. A part of her wishes she'd never gone to the Temple of Mythal, never met Abelas. Never felt the bone-deep cut of his dismissal. She's beneath his notice, like she isn't even one of the People. Because to him, no elf from the outside world is truly an elf.

And how could she be? She must look like a foolish child, with these lines tattooed on her face, when she doesn't even know what they mean.

But then fire flares inside her. It's the same fire that burned when she and Solas first spoke at Haven, when he dismissed the Dalish as children and their stories as inaccurate.

"No," she says.

"No?" he echoes.

She curls her hands into fists. "I'm sure you're right, Solas. Back in the days of Arlathan, that was how things we were done. But I told you before: the Dalish aren't the elves of Arlathan. The society we've made for ourselves is our own. This --" She touches the _vallaslin_ , running her fingers over the familiar lines. "Maybe it used to be a slave mark. But that was ages ago. That meaning is lost, forgotten -- and so we've made a new one to replace it. Now it stands for pride: pride in being in elf, in belonging to our own culture. Pride in our past, even if we don't remember that past perfectly."

"Even if the ancestors you honor kept slaves."

It still hurts, but she shrugs it off. "I'm not naive, Solas. I knew Arlathan couldn't have been perfect. There must have still been rich people and poor ones, conflicts and war -- all the bad things that exist today. Humans didn't invent all of that. But that doesn't mean I'm not still proud of the fact that we _had_ a civilization, before h --"

Verai catches herself. She'd been about to say "before humans destroyed it." But of course that's not quite what happened, is it? Arlathan was already in decline when Tevinter came. One more instance of the story being more complicated than she thought.

Solas looks down. "I was going to offer to remove the _vallaslin_."

"I appreciate that." She takes his hands in her own, brings them up between their bodies. "You said the nobles would tattoo their slaves to honor the gods. I tattooed myself for the same reason. It isn't a slave mark anymore; it's a mark of faith. Of belonging."

His voice is almost inaudible, even at this close range. He won't meet her eyes. "And what if they weren't the gods you think they were?"

Those murals in the Temple, showing a truth that hasn't been polished pretty and smooth by millennia of forgetting. "They were still ours," she says. "And we need that. The People need that."

His fingers tighten on hers, almost to the point of pain. "You always find a way to surprise me."

**Author's Note:**

> When I played the game, I sat for a good minute at least with my mouse cursor swinging back and forth between "yes, remove the vallaslin" and "no, leave them as they are." What really decided me was pretty silly: I was used to my Inquisitor's face with the tattoo, and thought it would be weird to see her without it. But later I thought about my [headcanon about how my Inquisitor saw Dalish culture](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7562161), and figured this would be the logical extrapolation of her attitude.
> 
> . . . which was really just digging myself in deeper, though I didn't know it at the time.


End file.
